excessive visceral fat

Hi BYC! Our family has been raising chickens for a couple years now. We did one batch of Cornish Rock Crosses a couple years ago and lost half the flock (natural causes? They just died). We have had hens for a while, too, with great success.

We recently moved to a new area and started our flock again. We have some laying hens and just slaughtered our first round of meat birds (a heritage breed this time). We had 7 roosters and 1 hen that we slaughtered. The roosters were all large, healthy birds with healthy innards.

The female, on the other hand, had large amounts of visceral fat...probably 3x as much as the roosters. All of her internal organs were encased in fat. Her liver was a brownish color instead of the reddish brown.